Year One – Beech & Elm Class News

Year 1 have had a busy first term! We started the year off with a project about our local area 'Who we are and where we live' (geography); we looked around our school and Highwoods with a focus on geographical features and the use of descriptive language (linking to our English grammar work). We also enjoyed a unit of work focussed on performance poetry when we performed a variety of local poems to parents and carers at a recital.

This half term we have been following the topic of Celebrations and have found out about a variety of religious and cultural celebrations including Fireworks night, Diwali, Advent and Christmas. We also spent 2 weeks learning more about Remembrance which resulted in some very thoughtful artwork.

In Maths we have found out about shape, number and place value as well as addition and subtraction. We are really working on securing our understanding of how tens and ones work and we have found that this helps us with all sorts of calculations and mathematical problems. In English we wrote a set of instructions about how to wrap a present after reading and following a real range of instruction texts. More recently, we have looked at the features of an invitation and we are very much looking forward to our parents and carers receiving these and joining us at our end of topic celebration. As part of this they will get to try the delicious cakes that we have planned and made in DT (after doing so brilliant taste testing as part of their research!).

Our Science work this term has linked in well to our topics - we have looked at the changing seasons as well as identifying and naming local plants, including trees. We have enjoyed practical home learning tasks, finding and naming a variety of leaves. Our PE sessions have included parachute games, ball skills (throwing, bouncing and catching) and using apparatus to link movements including rolling and jumping.

Many of the children are participating in our Nativity performance 'Behind the Stable Door' in our final weeks of term and have been busy practising their singing and dancing skills ready for their starring moment!

Next term we will be starting a History of Toys theme which links clearly to our non-fiction work in English. We will be looking at how toys have changed over time (history) and the materials from which they are made (science). In RE we will be looking at special objects and symbols and in PE we will be continuing to develop our ball skills as well as taking part in some toy related dance sessions.